Sharanya is Wonkhe’s SUs Community and Policy Officer. She joins Wonkhe from Middlesex University SU, where she was Senior Campaigns and Influence Coordinator on the union’s Senior Leadership Fast Track – designing policy briefings, coaching elected officers, and translating student insight into campaigns. She launched the Ideas for Change petitioning platform and overhauled the union’s democratic structures to get more students involved across the year.
Before moving into staff roles, Sharanya spent two terms as a sabbatical officer at Royal Holloway SU. In her first term, as VP Education, she co-designed the university’s Access and Participation Plan and managed a network of over 350 academic representatives. In her second term, as President, she led the NeverOk and HelpNotHarm campaigns on harassment, sexual misconduct and drug harm reduction. Sharanya holds a BSc in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Royal Holloway.
Outside of work she can be found in the gym, out on a run, or making ambitious progress on a reading list that has never once got shorter.
26 pieces
Newest first, since June 2026 · page 1 of 2
· SUs · Members
A new report is out on employment disadvantage and here’s what SUs need to know
Sharanya Sivarajah digests a new Graduate Futures Institute survey of careers staff – and finds SUs missing from a story they should be central to
With Wonkhe SUs explainer
· SUs · Members
You can’t say that
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs
What happened at Senate Summit 2026?
Jim Dickinson, Sharanya Sivarajah and Mack Marshall round up the first Wonkhe SUs Senate Summit – assessment, employability, rights and Europe, session by session
With Jim Dickinson and Mack Marshall
· SUs
Every issue affects students as students, if you draw the line right
Sharanya Sivarajah reflects on a summer of meeting sabbs who are tired of hearing the they can’t campaign on issues that don’t affect “students as students”
· SUs · Members
Course correction
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs · Members
Credit where it’s due
With Jim Dickinson
· Comment
There’s 104 days of summer vacation and school comes along just to end that
Sharanya Sivarajah and Jim Dickinson explain what they learned on a summer of SU training visits, where students patiently patched up the gaps their universities left behind
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs · Members
Rights here, right now
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs
Why do students take their rights problems to Reddit?
Jim Dickinson and Sharanya Sivarajah examine why so few students turn to their students’ union when something goes wrong – and launch a new tool to close the gap
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs · Members
From should to must
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs · Members
(Cost of) living in the past
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs
The sector could do with some starting from scratch
Sharanya Sivarajah reports back from officer training in Scotland, where sabbs ripping up the rule book showed more ambition for students than a year of real rewrites across three nations has managed
· SUs · Members
Blocks and wedges
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs · Members
The essential guide to immigration reform for SUs
Jim Dickinson sets out how immigration policy now shapes recruitment, fees, and international students’ prospects after graduation, and what SUs need to understand about the reforms driving it.
With Jim Dickinson and Wonkhe SUs explainer
· SUs · Members
Frozen out
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs · Members
24 things that MPs won’t know about when it comes to student finance
Jim Dickinson sets out 24 facts about student finance that MPs, MSPs, Senedd and Assembly members are unlikely to know, for SUs briefing politicians ahead of their engagements.
With Jim Dickinson and Wonkhe SUs explainer
· SUs · Members
Great expectations, small microwaves
With Jim Dickinson
· Comment
The class of 2026 has clocked that they can’t have it all
Students were sold an education, a community and a transformation. Jim Dickinson and Sharanya Sivarajah find a generation of student leaders working out those promises no longer fit inside one life
With Jim Dickinson
· SUs · Members
And we danced all night
With Jim Dickinson
· Comment
The engine of employability is relational, not informational
Jim Dickinson and Sharanya Sivarajah unpack new polling of over 18,000 students – and find that belonging, not the careers service, is what builds career confidence
With Jim Dickinson